Claimed
by spurplebirdie
Summary: Post Cell saga. Vegeta starts to come to terms with his imperfect relationship with Bulma and his life on Earth.
1. Chapter 1

The harsh wind on his face eased his burning fury as he clenched his fists. Kakarot was gone; dead and refusing to return to this realm. Vegeta would never again face him in battle. Never demonstrate the supremacy accorded to him by the royal blood coursing through his veins and running down his palms. The realization reignited his rage. He felt the pressure build behind his eyes and winced. He shut his eyes tightly and shook his head to clear his blurring vision. That third class brat they sent to conquer Earth should have long faded to insignificance. How could he, and his half blooded Earthling offspring, surpass the only surviving son of the ancient royal warrior line of planet Vegeta. He had disgraced his blood and the entire race that he was once destined to rule.

The woman was staring at him again. He could feel her gaze as he faced down his shame. He stood away from her, imaging the disappointment and scorn he was certain must be evident on her delicate features. Her presence was a mockery. A reminder of his weakness and his failure. Her bastard shrieked as the wind stung his eyes and the cold ripped through his clothes. The boy was just as unworthy to carry the title of the prince of all Saiyans as his father. He heard her approach, but did not move to acknowledge her.

"Vegeta", she called. Her voice was harsh in is ears, even as the howling wind swallowed the sound.

"Vegeta, how long have you been out here for? Come inside."

The Saiyan prince only clenched his fists harder. He was ashamed and disgraced, but he would not allow himself to be commanded by that foolish woman.

She began to reach her hand towards him, longing to touch him, but even she could sense his hostility and so she slowly withdrew.

"Vegeta. Please. You haven't slept in days." Her voice trembled as she fought tears. "You're going to make yourself sick"

He whipped his whole body around in an instant. "Foolish woman!", he shouted with all his pent up fury, "Am I a full blooded Saiyan. Your idiotic human notions of health mean nothing to me! How ridiculous to think that I, the Prince of all Saiyans, could become ill from standing outside. Besides, you're the one who looks like you're about to collapse from exhaustion. Disgusting."

He was right. The muscles in her shoulders ached and their tiny infant son was a ball of lead in her arms. Bulma hadn't had a proper night's sleep since before the Androids had arrived. Trunks had been restless as well, and any sleep she did manage, was fitful and interrupted by the cries and demands of her baby. Vegeta saw her face fall in response to his words, and felt a twinge of remorse. He saw the tears swim behind her eyes and her lip twitch as she fought against the pain of his callousness. She swallowed hard and turned to leave.

Vegetal shifted his body and continued to stare off into the distance, trying not to listen to her footsteps as she left him to his face his shame and uncertainty alone. He slowly came to the realization that his goals- defeating Frieza, surpassing Kakarot, proving his worthiness to ascend to the Saiyan throne- were no longer just out of his grasp, but entirely unachievable. Even the androids had been defeated (_not by him, never by him_) and the woman and child were safe.

'_Surely they would be better off without him_.' Vegeta thought bitterly. '_The blasted woman had said as much when she confessed her pregnancy. She's the most objectively desirable woman he'd ever encountered. of course she could easily find another to take my place in her bed, to raise her child, a better man who wouldn't bruise her body with his passionate caresses or risk breaking her neck while in the midst of a particularly grusome dream- a nightmare where Frieza would find him (he would always, always find him), and…_' Vegeta couldn't face it. It was a vision he saw often enough in his dreams without dwelling on it during his waking hours. He forced his fears away and began to examine his options.

It was clear from the beginning that he didn't have anywhere else to go, or any means of getting there even if he did. The very thought of staying on Earth for the foreseeable future disgusted and comforted him in equal measure. The woman has given him a home- if not a true family- and she made it clear that she expected him to stay, even if she didn't want him asher mate. '_What does she mean by it?!_' Even still he could not begin to understand._ 'To say with one breath that she's glad to have my child growing inside her, and with another that she doesn't need me to raise it. That she doesn't want me to feel obligated to her because of an accidental pregnancy. That it doesn't mean she has any permanent claim on me._' If getting her with child wasn't enough for her to claim him, Vegeta didn't think she ever would. But he would be damned if he ever let her go. He had claimed her from the first time they lay together. She belonged to him. She was his by virtue of his superior strength and his intense need to possess her.

As the first hint of daylight appeared on the horizon, Vegeta returned to his mate's bed. He quietly undressed and slid into bed with his woman, gently wrapping his arm around her waist and kissing her hair. Bulma awoke and turned languorously towards her lover and kissed his lips, "I love you, honey", she whispered as she snuggled into his neck.

"Hush woman, I care nothing for your foolish Earthling sentiments" he replied as he gathered his most treasured possession more securely into his loving arms.


	2. Chapter 2

Bulma awoke slowly from the first uninterrupted night of sleep she had experienced in months. She languished in the space between slumber and full wakefulness, caught between forcing her eyes open to face the uncomfortably and annoyingly bright sunlight and giving in to her desire to sleep for just a few more precious moments. Her head ached and her stomach was clenched painfully tight with anxiety for the coming day.

She had slept surprisingly well. The bed was unusually warm and the pillow next to her carried a single long and stiff dark hair. She couldn't quite recall if Vegeta had finally relented and joined her in bed, but her dreams had been pleasant and filled with feelings of comfort and safety, instead of the usual nightmares of fire and destruction and emotionless mechanical laughter. Regardless, he was gone now.

She grimaced as she heard Trunks's sharp cries through the baby monitor. "_That's it then_," she thought resentfully, "_I have to get up now. There's no choice about it_". She quickly stood and reached for her housecoat, fighting a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea. She rushed towards the nursery and picked up the baby, cradling him to her chest. He continued to cry with abandon, a cry that Bulma had identified very early on to mean he was hungry. Trunks rarely cried for any other reason, but it was enough. The boy was nearly always hungry.

Bulma eased herself into her nursing chair next to the crib and opened her housecoat. The baby latched on painfully and Bulma yelped. She would have to stop breastfeeding soon. She had planned on continuing for at least a year, but she was starting to realize that despite supplementing his diet with formula to satisfy the half Saiyan's voracious appetite, her body could no longer keep pace with his demands.

"_Like father like son, I suppose_" she thought despairingly feeling defeated and exhausted. Lately her interactions with Vegeta had been little more than shouting matches and insults, and although Bulma was famously confident and self-assured, these interactions left her feeling increasingly on edge and emotionally drained. Even so, Bulma was as determined as ever to continue their relationship. She had long suspected that he cared for her far more than he was willing to admit, and she stubbornly clung to the hope that they could somehow make it work.

Bulma didn't quite understand why it was that she was so drawn to Vegeta, especially since he treated her and Trunks with an infuriating combination of indifference and disdain. She certainly admired his ambition and commitment to training, but she didn't fool herself into believing he had many positive qualities. Perhaps it was his strength. Bulma was not privy to many details of Vegeta's upbringing, but she knew that he was raised from birth to be a warrior and then taken from his planet and his people at a very young age and forced into the life of a child soldier. He was clearly psychologically and emotionally damaged, perhaps irrecoverably so, but he had never let himself become truly broken. He had always persevered, always pushed himself to the edge of his limits, always strived to become stronger, to free himself from tyranny, to fulfill his self-proclaimed destiny and to become worthy of his birth right. Bulma could not even imagine the mental fortitude required to endure such a life. She tried not to think too much about the billions of sentient life forms he had murdered during his years of forced servitude. She tried not to think at all about the possibility that he had enjoyed it.

More than all of that, Bulma admired his ruthless pragmatism and ability to see past her lack of fighting power and admittedly volatile emotions to recognize her brilliance. He was the only one who truly understood how magnificent her inventions really were. Her entire adult life, the Z fighters had been sidelining and ridiculing her. None of them took her seriously or appreciated her contributions, or respected her impressive intellect. Especially Yamcha, who despite all Bulma did for him during the long years of their relationship, only ever saw her as a pretty face, nice tits, and a bank account.

Vegeta was different. When he needed training equipment, he realized immediately that she was the only one who could possibly provide it. They had spent hours arguing over the specifications of the gravity room and training drones and about what was and wasn't physically possible to engineer. Vegeta had provided her with all his knowledge of advanced alien technology he had picked up over years of performing basic maintenance on his space pod and emergency repairs of essential equipment. Armed with Vegeta's half-remembered schematics and specifications of an entire host of alien technological marvels, and the certainty that recreating such machines was indeed within the realm of possibility, Bulma invented more innovative high tech aerospace equipment and filed more patent claims in 4 years than most engineers could hope to achieve in their entire careers. Sure, he never really thanked her for the equipment, but she saw clearly how pleased he was with each incremental improvement.

She found herself eager to show off her achievements and she glowed with pride each time he professed a particular invention "decent" or "acceptable". She knew this was high praise coming from the prideful Saiyan prince, and she couldn't get enough. "_It would be so nice to get back to that easy companionship_ _and __developing romance we had before__ the pregnancy and the whole mess with the Androids and Cell_". Vegeta had been quite shocked when she told him she was pregnant and had reacted more angrily than she had anticipated. He declared her an ungrateful distraction and stormed out in disgust as she tried to explain that she hadn't planned on forcing him into fatherhood, and didn't intend to impose any obligation on him.

Bulma cried for hours after he left Earth. As much as she knew that he would never pass up the fight against the Androids and so he would have to return soon enough, she didn't think they would ever again be lovers, or even friends. His abandonment hurt too much. She hadn't expected that he would react particularly well to the news of his impending fatherhood, but she didn't expect him to just leave either. He had been almost wild with suppressed fury when he left, but when she first told him, once he had recovered from slack-jawed shock, he looked at her for the smallest fraction of an instant with wonder and desire and such naked vulnerable need that it made Bulma's heart clench painfully to recall it. It was the same way he had looked at her the first time they had sex, when he had matter-of-factly declared "you are mine" when they lay together basking in the afterglow of their release. She didn't know what to make of it at the time. She still didn't know what to make of it a full 2 years later.

But now, after all that had happened during the Cell games and the after math of Mirai Trunks's resurrection and return to his own time, she was unwavering in her conviction that their relationship could be salvaged, given enough persistence, tenacity and courage. It was a good thing that she had all three qualities in abundance.


End file.
